A Hikkikomori StopGap

Blog under construction (well not really but I'm stumped)

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:32:57 -0400

I got lucky and received some constructive feedback these past few days. Since Posterous staff also said they were going to look into why some text colors were off, this is just a post here to say I’m temporarily thinking of re-hauling the blog as I try to improve my writing style.

Good day and talk to you when all this is done.P.S. I’m still available on Twitter and the Forum

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Hairpin Bend

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 21:12:40 -0400

Although this answer is talking about the culture of Libertarians in general, I’m sharing this answer because I feel this is also a good analogy to why I’m elitist towards the definition of Hikikomori but it doesn’t mean I’m trying to insist a fan club community where people who don’t fit my definition should stay away from hikikomories and why I encourage non-hikikomories to participate but also I discourage people who don’t fit the label (from my perspective) to stop claiming they are hikikomories:

Libertarians, in my perception, are stuck in what I term a “hairpin bend”. That is, the people who are less wise than them are frequently indistinguishable from the people who are more wise than them.
There’s a large class of people who disagree with libertarianism because they’re clueless about economics, misunderstand the basic tenets and make stupid arguments. There’s another, smaller group of people who understand perfectly well how libertarianism works and choose to reject it for intelligent, well thought out reasons. From the outside, both will have roughly the same range of political beliefs.So what happens is some people from the first group will have an epiphany, they will finally get libertarianism and they will become a loyal convert. For some fraction of the group who become libertarians, they will have a second epiphany, realize the various fundamental flaws that make it a fundamentally unworkable system and leave libertarianism for a more mainstream political philosophy.
As you get a boiling off of the most enlightened members, the hairpin bend becomes a concentration of a certain type of person. This, in a large part, IMHO, explains the uniformity of personality of libertarians compared to many other social groups.Every time you have a hairpin bend, you tend to see this similar phenomena and it can often be used as a diagnosis for where hairpin bends exist.
Note: There may well exist further hairpin bends further up the wisdom chain and it does seem some people have an epiphany back into libertarianism. This is mainly a critique of the “naive libertarianism” viewpoint.

Source: http://www.quora.com/Why-do-libertarians-come-across-as-arrogant-and-thinking-they-know-all-the-answers

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(Old) Being exasperated with people who just don't listen -> politically correct copy-paste version

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 12:26:30 -0400

Personally, these aren’t much help to me and I constantly break them but they are a set of good reminders nevertheless:Don’t take negative comebacks to heart.

When you are faced with one of life’s more challenging personalities, the best thing to do is to not take it personally. Sometimes it is your self-assurance that is a cause of irritation for less secure people and their response is to try and weevil their way in through criticism. This is never a reason to fall back into old patterns of unhealthy communication styles. Simply reassert whatever your point is and choose to leave it there. It is something they can work on with the full enlightenment on where you stand.

Seek the middle way.

Sometimes if you’re placed in a position of having to choose between differing viewpoints in a group, there might be accusations of arrogance against one division by the other. Always consider the possibility of being able to acknowledge both sides of the argument and finding the middle way to draw the concerns together. You don’t necessarily have to solve the situation but you can be a powerful facilitator to the group finding an answer to its division through your assertive communications. In such situations, inform everyone that the situation is not one for blame, not one for recriminations, and not one for finding fault. Instead, help people to see that there is a chance for compromise by showing them where each has made assumptions about the other or the facts of the situation, while still upholding your own belief or opinion. And suggest that they have another look at things to reach a compromise.

Do not confuse criticism with insults.

Insults are ad hominem (personal conflict like off-topic descriptions of a person) but criticism may change your life for the better because you may use it to redirect your communication and efforts. Stay engaged and active while not allowing the criticism to stagnate you, but use the stirring-up to prompt a flow of more appropriate inputs and outputs…

Should statements.

You beat up on yourself as a way of getting motivated to do something. You “should” do this, you “must” do this, you “ought” to do this, and so on. This doesn’t make you want to do it, it only makes you feel guilty. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

Remind yourself that you don’t need anyone’s approval.

If you’re especially sensitive to people’s behavior towards you, to the extent that you regularly overreact, it might be because you’ve got a strong radar for rejection. If you pick up on any kind of displeasure, you worry that you’re doing something wrong, and you want to fix it eagerly, anxiously. But just because someone isn’t happy with you doesn’t mean you’ve done something wrong. In many cases, it means that person isn’t happy with themselves, and expects you to fill in the blanks (which is impossible).

Know your emotions.

When our ancestors encountered an enemy or a wild animal on a jungle trail, there were only a limited number of things they could do. They could fight, run away, become paralyzed with indecision, or give up. Each of these responses matches the four emotions just mentioned. But in the much more complicated jungle of modern life, these emotions are often no longer useful, and may actually do us a great deal of harm.

See it as an opportunity to improve — and without that constant improvement, we are just sitting still.

Improvement is a good thing. For example, this criticism: “You write about the same things over and over and your blog posts are boring and stale”, can be read: “I need to increase the variety of my posts and find new ways of looking at old things.” That’s just one example of course — you can do that with just about any criticism. Sometimes it’s just someone having a bad day, but many times there’s at least a grain of truth in the criticism.

Be the better person.

Too many times we take criticism as a personal attack, as an insult to who we are. But it’s not. Well, perhaps sometimes it is, but we don’t have to take it that way. Take it as a criticism of your actions, not your person. If you do that, you can detach yourself from the criticism emotionally and see what should be done. But the way that many of us handle the criticisms that we see as personal attacks is by attacking back. “I’m not going to let someone talk to me that way.” Especially if this criticism is made in public, such as in the comments of a blog or on a forum. You have to defend yourself, and attack the attacker … right? Wrong. By attacking the attacker, you are stooping to his level. Even if the person was mean or rude, you don’t have to be the same way. You don’t have to commit the same sins. Be the better person.

Understand that it’s not you, it’s them.

This can be surprisingly difficult, considering that impossible people have complete mastery of blaming skills. If you’re dealing with an impossible person, you’re probably being told on a regular basis that every conceivable thing is your fault. It isn’t. As the saying goes, “It takes two to tango.” Chances are, the more often they blame you, the more they themselves are actually at fault. Keep in mind that this is not to be used as a way to blame them. Blaming is what impossible people do, and they do it well. Instead, you are only facing the facts, for your own sake. That being said, here’s a simple way to tell: If you accept responsibility for your own faults and resolve to improve yourself, it’s probably not you. Remember, impossible people can do no wrong.

It is not easier to avoid life’s difficulties and responsibilities than to face them.

Even painful experiences, once we can get through them, can serve as a basis for learning and future growth.

Protect your self-esteem.

If you have regular dealings with someone who tries to portray you as the source of all evil, you need to take active steps to maintain a positive self-image. Remind yourself that this person’s opinion is not necessarily the truth. Understand that oftentimes, impossible people are particularly “fact-challenged.” If the attacks have little basis in raw fact, dismiss them. You can’t possibly be as bad as this person would like you to believe you are. Do not defend yourself out loud, however. It will only provoke the impossible person into another tirade.

Guard against anger.

If it helps, consider the fact that your anger is actually a precious gift to the impossible person. Anything you do or say while angry will be used against you over and over again. Impossible people tend to have amazing memories, and they will not hesitate to use a nearly endless laundry list of complaints from the past against you. Five years from now, you could be hearing about the angry remark you made today (which you didn’t even mean in the first place). Impossible people will seize anything that provides them the opportunity to lay blame like it was gold.

You should care if you offend someone.

You should care for others’ feelings but in a positive way, not in a way which weakens you. There is no problem if you hesitate to say something because you do not want to hurt the listener, but if your hesitation is due to fear and not because of genuine sympathy for the listener, then you need to work on overcoming this negative trait within you.

Realize that impossible people engage in projection.

Understand that you are going to be accused of much (or all) of this behavior yourself. If your impossible person gets a look at this text, to them it will look like a page about you. Prepare yourself for the fact that the impossible person’s flaws and failings will always be attributed to you. Remember, in their minds, you are at fault for everything! They will have an endless supply of arguments to support this, and if you make the mistake of encouraging them, they will be more than happy to tell you why you are the impossible person, and how ironic it is that you are under the mistaken impression that it is them.

People with anti-social personality disorders lack the capacity for a conscience and thus have no sense of right and wrong except for how to get what they want.

But they are not always to be found in prisons. They are often very charming people, and make great salespersons — or politicians. Some of them can be very good at it, and they just might end up as elected officials or the CEOs of major corporations. Often times they are also exceptionally intelligent.

Politically Incorrect Version Found Here (Forum Thread) - http://hikikomori.createmybb3.com/showthread.php?tid=49&pid=168#pid168 (If the title sounds off, it’s because this is an old finished draft post I just never posted but the forum thread was recent. I’m not even sure I didn’t post this before but Posterous search box shows nothing so I probably haven’t posted this at all. Also please keep in mind that Wikis are constantly being re-edited and I didn’t recheck the links)

Sources:Note that I don’t find these articles worthwhile on their own which is why I chopped up the contents and combined them into the above.
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Assertive-Without-Being-Arrogant http://www.wikihow.com/Gain-Control-of-Your-Emotions

http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Taking-Things-Personally http://www.wikihow.com/Accept-Criticism-With-Grace-and-Appreciation

http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-With-Impossible-People http://www.wikihow.com/Communicate-in-an-Assertive-Manner

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In need of reader feedback

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:36:53 -0400

Copy-paste of post here:

Now that there’s a forum, I’m thinking of dropping the chewables type threads on the blog as they are often copy pasted and I don’t add any extra original content to them most of the time.
That said I wonder which is more preferable for the readers. Some of the core differences I can think of are:
Blogs:Easier navigation and discovery - Posts are auto-tweeted. Don’t require posts to keep on top.
Longer staying time - While both are free services I’m registered into and neither contents are backed up on my side, the blogs are more longer lasting because even if the comments fell from spamming the content and position of the post remains the same. Also since my Posterous is also auto-posted in Tumblr, it’s two baskets vs. one.Youtube embeds - While a member on the forum said it’s possible to add youtube tags, he didn’t show me how.
Forum: Easier anonymous posting - The open forum doesn’t require providing your e-mail.
Forum lay-out - Maybe this is just a biased sample but it seems more hikikomories are willing to comment and discuss things on a discussion board than if it’s on someone’s blog. That said, it’s still no anonymous imageboard though. I know some blogs often cross-post from a blog to a forum but I’ve always felt that it unnecessarily spreads the commentors apart.
That said, I am guilty of separating Posterous and Tumblr copies of the blog but I felt that was more of a background and backup issue.

For those who didn’t visit the Posteous pages, here’s what I mean by a chewables thread: Copy-Paste: The adversity of opportunity

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Fake Smile or Real Smile?

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:08:17 -0400

Note picture above not from actual link. Link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/ I’ve already retweeted this from Catarina’s twitter stream but I just thought of blogging this anyway to highlight the quiz.

That said, I don’t know the accuracy of this quiz (I felt it needed more sincere but clearly fake smile from a personal issue perspective) but I got 10 out of 20 so I maybe it is an accurate and (potential) exercise for Hikikomories.

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Introducing the Temporary Hikikomori StopGap Forum

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 04:14:41 -0400

Some of you may have noticed the new forum link below the blog title.Well, that’s a general forum I registered in MyBB as a Hikikomori forum.

For more details, here’s the copy-paste details I’ve posted in the forum. NewsFlash, hikikomori forums exist already!

Yeah…I can’t say I’ve been in every one of them but for the most part, this forum was a struggle for me.
I have zero experiences with being an admin for a forum and I don’t even know most of the options on MyBB. I didn’t even visit the support forums yet and I don’t know if I’ve set anything incorrectly.
For the most part though, some Hikikomories felt alienated or discontent with other hikikomori forums and I created this one as a temporary gap. Actually I’m one of the ones who left a hikikomori community but for the most part, I just post on free blogs.
To avoid coming off like I’m competing with the membership of other hikikomori forums though, I’m making this a general forum for anyone even non-hikikomories to participate in. It’s just that for the most part, I am a Non-Japanese hikikomori and that’s the community I aim this forum for. Talk of the Differences!
Well Hikikomories prefer Imageboards and this isn’t one for one thing.I do provide a “Trash Zone” sub-forum though if you haven’t noticed. I doubt it will inspire people to post anonymously though.
Other rules I didn’t include in the main rules link are:*Sub-forums - This was a minor issue in another hikikomori forum I was in and my stance on this is simple. Setting aside my own preference, if you want a sub-forum made, there’s two paths you can go at it.
Get enough topics made on a single subject that it fills up these original forums and I’ll make a sub-forum for it which is the more obvious path.(Although for the above, I don’t know if MyBB has anyway to mass-move forum topics to another sub-forum)
The second one though is why I’m addressing this. If you want to request a sub-forum, my requirement is that you have a list of topics to fill it already. Be able to do that without flooding a forum like a spammer and you get to keep your sub-forum. Fail to do that in a day and I’ll delete it. Depending on my interest in the topic though, I might extend that to a week or a month and see how it goes.
*Post editing - This was often a trick abused by hikikomories in another forum I was in. That’s why here, I’ve set a time limit for how long before you can edit your post. (It should be 30 min. per post if I set it correctly.) As far as requesting for a post to be deleted, I’m normally regretful of deleting posts but it’s your right. I can’t guarantee I can delete anything quickly though depending on how much I got flooded with these requests.
*How Temporary is Temporary - For the most part, it’s based on how active I am at visiting and checking up on this forum.I’d like to think I would be an active admin but for the most part, I don’t think that’s possible. It’s not really very motivating to visit a mostly dead forum and if this does get enough members, I still can’t guarantee I would be here to moderate every hour. I’m very inconsistent even with my blog posting which is why I don’t schedule posts ahead of time.
It’s more likely though that I may be fast enough to moderate any problematic posts but you’ll just have to determine that from my actions rather than what I say here.Temporary also represents my lack of ability. Eventually you may find a hikikomori forum you wish to moved into because of my lack of skills. All I can say is as long as there’s users here, I’ll try to be active.
If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask.

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Copy-Paste: Building Cages and Dropping Keys

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:39:47 -0400

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Copy-Paste: Selling Communication

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 23:04:37 -0400

My apologies if this comes off as spammy or Capt. Obvious.

The reason why I’m sharing this article isn’t so much because of the solution or the conclusion provided but because of the way the author started out with a tidbit of his initial personal struggles.

I think part of the reason why marketing-related and business-tutorial blogs have high traffic is not just due to the work on the author’s part but because e-commerce especially general social media marketing simulates how social anxiety feels like to normal people and in that sense, people are drawn to these blogs because it’s the equivalent of a safe haven on how to cope with ones own fears and doubts without feeling lost.

I don’t mean to belittle the whole category like this. Part of the reason why I don’t share lots of articles related to any potential… money making concept is because I haven’t and don’t know how to succeed and I don’t want to share any vacuous advise and this includes blog articles that provide clues on how to improve one’s presentation and communication with people.

It’s still two different worlds and things like dressing well and body language are much more related to real life casual interaction in the long run but what makes some well written online marketing blog article advises help is because for some of us, it’s not lack of confidence or anxiety that keeps us from communicating well and although different, at the end of the day what makes us similar to people who want to market their products is that some of us want to find out how to market our words in such a way that we lessen alienating or causing people to tune out.

Snippets:

We need “hungry” people before making food and having the “best” location.

How well do you know your audience? Seriously, who is your customer?

Do you know which of your readers needs your product? Of those that do…how many can afford it?

Can they consume it in the way you’ve written it? Have you even asked them what they want?

Take for example, my first 2 E-Books here…10 Ways to Monetize Your Blog and The Webrepreneurs Guide to Funding Your Business (both free).

Both are good books in their own right, but neither really fits what I’m doing here…at least not as well as I’d like them to. They just don’t fit the message that I’ve been sending.

On the other hand, there’s Facebook Rockstar, which I launched just a few days ago. I actually didn’t want to make this course…at least I wasn’t planning on it…but I started getting a few requests; slowly at first, but eventually nearly 25% of the people that bought Twitter Rockstar told me they wanted a Facebook Rockstar.

What Do THEY Want - It’s not about what you want.

When I first started Internet Marketing and Blogging, I worked on every great idea that popped into my head. The only one that worked was Twitter Rockstar, and I made that one because I bought a shitty E-Book and knew I could do it better. Every single other project was a flop.

It’s kind of funny though, because out of all of the really cool stuff I thought people would want, I learned they wanted something simple.

Lesson learned…When an Internet Marketers says that you need to do your niche research and learn about the market before you try and sell something…listen to them. They’re right.

I realized that random ass ideas just weren’t going to cut it.

My savvy audience didn’t want something I thought was cool. They wanted something that THEY thought was cool.

Source: http://nathanhangen.com/blog/desire

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Old: E-Learning and Retardness of Hikikomori

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:39:42 -0400

Twitter is currently down but these links are mostly share quality and I really didn’t intend to post this as a blog post but oh well…

Elearning: A Possible Solution to Japan’s Growing Hikikomori Problem

These Hikikomoris are web junkies, they spend most of their time surfing the internet. Some of them are gifted with great potentials as programmers and graphic artist. It is such as waste to see young teenagers shut themselves inside their room, much more talented teenagers. So what to do with these teenagers who have potentials? How do we prevent them from rotting away inside their rooms? The answer is Elearning. Since these students became Hikikomoris because they failed to find a university or college to get into, why not bring them to a different classroom? Bring these students to virtual classroom, to be precise. Online learning authors use many elearning tools that can cater to a wide range of students. Surely, this can be appealing to Japanese students.

80% of Hikikomori “Retarded or Schizophrenic”

Not my comment:

The problem isn’t really with the diagnosis, but rather the selection. They’re only diagnosing people coming in voluntarily. This seems to me to suggest that these people on some level know they’re sick.

They haven’t investigated a representative sample, but rather hikkikomori who (or whose parents) believe they are sick. Big surprise that 80% of them actually ARE mentally unhealthy. Scientifically, this study is lousy.

Next we’ll investigate people coming into hospitals and conclude that 90% of the average Japanese population currently have diseases.

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Hackers Wanted Documentary

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:25:00 -0400

“Wish you luck, hope you don’t end up in a prison jail.”

“Well…if I do, I’ll make sure to make an experience out of it.” - Adrian Lamo

Hackers Wanted is a very basic documentary. I don’t mean this from a knowledgeable coder point of view but from an average internet surfer knowledge level.

There’s really nothing in this documentary that would shock or surprise people who have a basic understanding of what hacking means (as a dictionary term, not the actual act)

Even the details you might not have heard of won’t give you any nitty gritty insight into the daily grind of a hacker.

You could compare this torrent to many of those Pro-Piracy torrents that get seeded by tons of people but really only containing a clean image ideology of the subject they’re talking about.

That said, this documentary is particularly notable because of the premise behind it:

From Wikipedia:

Hackers Wanted is an unreleased American documentary film.

Directed and written by Sam Bozzo, the film explores the origins and nature of hackers and hacking by following the adventures of Adrian Lamo, and contrasting his story with that of controversial figures throughout history. The film is narrated by Kevin Spacey.

Originally named “Can You Hack It?” The film failed to get a conventional release because of alleged conflicts between its producer and others on the team. On May 20, 2010, a version of the film was leaked to BitTorrent. Adrian Lamo has stated that he had no involvement in the leak.

“It’s ironic that a film about overcoming barriers, about new technologies, about thinking differently, had to come to the public eye by being hacked out of the hands of people who, after making a film about the free flow of information, tried to lock away that information forever. The truth tends to itself.” -Adrian Lamo

According to an insider, the latest version of the film contains additional footage and is significantly different from the one leaked online.[citation needed]

How does this relate to Hikikomori?

Torrent link: http://btjunkie.org/torrent/Hackers-Wanted-2008-DVDRip-MP4-LKRG/419660c1473a8e6d6756dca7951ed5c87ab7c3d105f3

Warning! I don’t understand codecs but even when viewing it with the latest K-lite codec pack, the video will auto-mute around 48:32 of the video. If you move forward past this section, the sound doesn’t go away as long as you don’t have the video playing around this point.

It relates to Hikikomori because the hacker ideal is very similar to being isolated from the outside world only Hackers don’t isolate themselves in a room and many of them actually mingle outside.

Again, from a knowledge point of view, it’s not really that shocking but it’s still a perspective average Hikikomories would want to check out.

Of course for those actual talented Hikikomories, the documentary is kind of obvious if not optimistically portrayed but it’s still something Hikikomories would want to check out in case they never thought through Lamo’s perspective of the world.

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Copy Paste: Tales of a Recovering Hikikomori

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 11:01:16 -0400

First off, even if we’re both Filipinoes, I don’t know who this blogger is nor can I confirm whether he is a Hikikomori or merely an Otaku.

That said, his post got through Google Alerts so it must be notable someway.

Here’s the condensed version of his posts below.

Table of Contents/Landing Page:

http://www.otakuako.com/about/the-staff/tzia_ns-page/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori/

Individual Links + Excerpts…

Part 1:

http://otakuako.com/about/the-staff/tzia_ns-page/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori-1/

I spent roughly half a year doing nothing but reading manga and watching anime. I hardly left our house

I wasn’t contributing to society; I only contributed to the forums at Animesuki.

one part of my recovery is going to the mall…

Last month, I had the scary experience of finally buying an article of clothing on my own. I needed to buy a new set of socks as well a new set of underwear. It was hell, since there were just too many choices.

I recalled Madarame of Genshiken. I was in the same position as him. I felt the pain he was going through… And I decided to adopt his method. When I buy manga volumes, I just choose what I want, regardless of the price. So I bought myself a pair of jeans that cost me 800 pesos.

But it was too much. When I tried to look for shoes next, I was overwhelmed by the variety and PRICE of men’s shoes. At that point, I had it, so I finally escaped from the mall.

Part 2:

http://www.otakuako.com/about/the-staff/tzia_ns-page/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori-2/

…yesterday was Free Comic Book Day in the Philippines.

there I was, in the midst of a crossroad of my life. In order to fulfill my otaku-ness, I actually had to go out of my shelled life. So in the spirit of recovering from my hikikomori-ness, and also for the love of these geeky things, I went to Fully Booked. Two of them to boot.

it was interesting to see several people like me who came alone. Then I started to pity ourselves… Are we such losers that we can only manage to go out alone? Don’t we have friends who share our interests in these things? Are we that socially awkward?

Then I started to feel awkward due to the volume of people there.

…in order to save myself from over-thinking and causing myself more psychological trauma, I quickly took my free copy, bought the stuff I wanted, and left that place. Concentrating on driving helps me from thinking about these stuff.

Part 3:

http://www.otakuako.com/about/the-staff/tzia_ns-page/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori-3/

Year 2009 marked a big step towards my recovering from a hikikomori, largely thanks to the few conventions I was able to attend. One might say that conventions aren’t exactly the best way to cure oneself from social withdrawal, given that one surrounds oneself with quite a number of socially awkward people as well. Then those who aren’t socially awkward tend to just be weird for the most part. But hey, baby steps, baby steps.

Part 4:

http://www.otakuako.com/about/the-staff/tzia_ns-page/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori-4/

During the recently concluded Ozine Fest 2010, a few interesting things happened to me. I’d like to share them in the hopes of either entertaining you or letting you get a glimpse at how the Hikikomori mind works.

Part 5:

http://www.otakuako.com/about/the-staff/tzia_ns-page/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori-5/

Due to certain familial obligations (I have a complicated extended family), I am taking a vacation in Taipei, Taiwan as of this moment. Thus, I am blogging this internationally in a way. But being your regular (recovering) hikikomori, you can pretty much guess that there’s really not much I’m looking forward to do here. And so, research had to be done…

I chanced upon this blog article which discussed otaku hot spots in Taipei. And so an idea dawned on me to try experiencing the otaku culture here in Taipei. They say that Taiwan is still heavily influenced by the Japanese culture, so experiencing the local culture of Taiwanese otaku should be interesting, right?

Part 6:

http://www.otakuako.com/about/the-staff/tzia_ns-page/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori/tales-of-a-recovering-hikikomori-6/

Attending the Animax press con the other day gave me a rare opportunity to socialize. Gasp! Socialize? Yes, socialize. It’s about time I start making friends, right? It’s all part of the recovery, so I should do something. Plus I need contacts for this blog, so win-win.

But it’s never easy. And that’s where haoson’s role came in. I only need to go along with him and I’m bound to meet new people. He knows a good number of those people there, so with some luck, I’ll get to meet a few. And indeed he introduced me to some. Good ‘ol haoson, I know I can count on him.

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Critical Skills Quiz

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:53:05 -0400

I’d advise you to write down your choices as I’m just using this to test Posterous’ new PollEverywhere support.

I also can’t vouch for the notability of the book. It’s not so much that the book is bad but it’s more of a series of exercises to help show you how you should approach certain issues but unfortunately as you’ll see from the number of answers I got right below, all I got from the book was that I’m a poor critical thinker and constantly guessed the exercises wrong. (although this quiz is just a preliminary test for what parts of the book you can skip)

If there’s a plus, it’s that from the quick Google searches I got, this critical thinking quiz differs from the others in that it’s designed to be less of a logic or IQ test and really more on the level of a general quiz even people who are bad at basic math or specific dates can take.

Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Thinking-Builders-LearningExpress-Editors/dp/1576855082/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275405281&sr=8-1

2nd Edition (Note that this isn’t the torrent)

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Thinking-Skills-Success-Second/dp/1576857263/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275405292&sr=8-2

Torrent:

http://www.monova.org/details/3255605/CRITICAL%20THINKING%20SKILLS%20SUCCESS%20IN%2020%20MINUTES%20A%20DAY%20%5BCuPpY%5D.html

Preliminary Test Contained in the Book:

2. Every Monday, your teacher gives you a quiz on the reading he assigned for the weekend. Since he typically assigns at least 50 pages of textbook reading, the quizzes are difficult and you have not gotten good grades on them so far. Which answer represents the best idea for troubleshooting this problem and improving your grades?

A. I had a dream that I got a D on my biology test, and it came true. If I want to do better next time I need a more positive dream.

B. Beth wanted to become a better driver so she took a driving class and studied the Motor Vehicles manual. Her driving really improved.

C. After a strong wind storm last October, all of the leaves were off the trees. That is when I learned that wind is what makes the leaves fall.

D. When Max realized he was getting a cold, he started taking Cold-Go-Away. In four days, he felt much better, thanks to the Cold-Go-Away.

6. You are trying to decide what car to buy. You make a chart that compares a two-seater sports car, a two-door sedan, and a mini-SUV in three categories. What would not be a suitable choice for a category?

9. You read a story in the newspaper about salary negotiations involving public transportation workers. The workers are threatening to go on strike tomorrow if their demands for higher wages and better benefits are not met. What represents an inference made from this scenario?

10. “You think we need a new regulation to control air pollution? I think we have already got too many regulations. Politicians just love to pass new ones, and control us even more than they already do. It is suffocating. We definitely do not need any new regulations.”

11.

12.

A. There are 6 cans of tomatoes in the pantry, and another 14 in the basement. There are no other cans of tomatoes in his house. Therefore, he has twenty cans of tomatoes in his house.

B. Everyone who was northbound on the Interstate was late for work. Faith was on the Interstate. Faith was late to work.

C. Huang lives in either Kansas, Kansas City or Kansas City, Missouri. If he lives in Kansas, then he is American.

D. No one who eats in the cafeteria likes the pizza. My boss eats in the cafeteria. Therefore, she does not like pizza.

13.

14. Your dream is to spend a summer in Indonesia. After some research, you conclude that you will need 6,000 $ for the trip. Which answer represents the best choice for goal setting to make your dream a reality?

15.

16. D. Your boss asks you to finish a report by tomorrow morning, but it is your son’s birthday and you promised you would take him to the ball game tonight.

17. D. www.alincoln-library.com: from the presidential library in Springfield, Illinois, devoted to telling the life story of the sixteenth president.

18.

19. “How can you believe his testimony? He is a convicted felon!”

20. Evidence shows that the people who live in the Antarctic score higher on happiness surveys than those who live in Florida. Which is the best conclusion that can be drawn from this data?

21.

A. I got an A on this test. I was really tired last night, though, and I barely studied. To keep getting A’s, I need to stop studying so hard.

B. Your car is not running well. You just tried that new mechanic when you needed an oil change. I bet he is the reason you are having car trouble.

C. I have not vacuumed for weeks. There is dust and dirt all over the floors, and my allergies are acting up. If I want a cleaner house, I need to vacuum more frequently.

D. The Boston Red Sox have not won a world series in one hundred years. They won the American League playoffs in 2003. The Red Sox will lose this series.

Read the paragraph and answer the following two questions:

I always knew I wanted to be a marine biologist. When I was six, my parents took me to an aquarium, and I was hooked. But it was in college, when I got to work on an ocean research cruise, that I decided to specialize in oceanography. The trip was sponsored by the Plankton Investigative Service, and our goal was to collect as many different types of the microscopic plants and animals as we could, in order to see what, if any, impact the increased number of fishermen had on the marine ecosystem. Our groups was divided into two teams, each responsible for gathering a different type of plankton. Working with the phytoplankton, especially the blue-green algae, was fascinating. We measured the chlorophyll in the water to determine where, and in what quantity the phytoplankton were. This worked well because the water was so clear, free of sediment and contaminants.

22.

23.

24. You want to sell your 3 year old car and buy a new one. Which website would probably give you the best information on how to sell a used car?

25.

26.

27.

28. “We should not change our grading system to numbers instead of letters. The next thing you know, they will take our names away and refer to us by numbers, too!”

29.

30.

Answers:

1. a, c, d (Lesson 3)

2. b. (Lesson 6)

3. c. (Lesson 14)

4. a. (Lesson 9)

5. b. (Lesson 15)

6. c. (Lesson 4)

7. a. (Lesson 11)

8. d. (Lesson 7)

9. c. (Lesson 3)

10. b. (Lesson 16)

11. c. (Lesson 17)

12. c. (Lesson 12)

13. a. (Lesson 18)

14. a. (Lesson 5)

15. d. (Lesson 13)

16. c. (Lesson 1)

17. d. (Lesson 8)

18. b. (Lesson 14)

19. a. (Lesson 16)

20. d. (Lesson 10)

21. c. (Lesson 15)

22. b. (Lesson 19)

23. d. (Lesson 19)

24. a. (Lesson 7)

25. c. (Lesson 18)

26. b. (Lesson 1)

27. c. (Lesson 8)

28. a. (Lesson 13)

29. c. (Lesson 2)

30. b. (Lesson 9)

Answers I got incorrectly:

#2 d; correct: b

#3 b; correct: c

#4 d; correct: a

#6 a; correct: c

#7 d; correct: a

#9 d; correct: c

#17 c; correct: d

#19 c; correct: a

#24 d; correct: a

#26 c; correct: b

#28 d; correct: a

#29 b; correct: c

Posted via email from A Hikikomori StopGap | Comment »

Enervate

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:41:30 -0400

To enervate or not to enervate. That is the lover’s question.

Posted via email from Doreb - Things I Blog About When I’m Bored | Comment »

Copy-Paste/Request: Please Share Your Prioritization Methods Here

Mon, 31 May 2010 21:30:48 -0400

Just a copy of my post on DonationCoder for hikikomories who aren’t comfortable with creating a forum account:

Link: http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=22912

I don’t know how one can, in honesty, tout a prioritization scheme that says starting a blog is more important than making friends.

Source: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/1sxv8/

I think it’s a valid criticism and since I don’t know how to use SpreadSheets, I’ve never bothered with complicated or over-simplified grid comparing techniques.I think this holds true for Project Management too.

For the most part, the prioritization methods I’ve found are either too focus-centric on tasks to the point that they are more self-reflective projections on what you know or intend on doing first anyway or they are as rigid as GTD contexts and it ends up serving those who can already achieve their tasks rather than help those who have problems with prioritizing…or simply put, it’s an optimization hack rather than a “help me!” technique and that’s no good for those actually searching for a how to.

Posted via email from A Hikikomori StopGap | Comment »

Ideal

Sun, 30 May 2010 04:47:38 -0400

Name asked:

F-man, would you post sometime on your ideal? The goal you seek for hiki?

From an old post of mine:

Start Quote

This is an attention-whorish thread (for those who haven’t noticed). It’s basically me asking the hikikomoris here what they think of my answers to namaesukawanae’s survey.

For a more neutral Advise Corner thread with the same theme, check out these threads:

Do you think we Hikikomoris are diverse enough to warrant a recommended list of guides for our social lifestyle?

Do you think Hikikomori is linked to Neurodiversity Do you think I’m insulting Hikikomoris?

Right now they are in the 1st page of Advise Corner but since I plan to send a copy of this to 2chan’s /b/ and the AnonIB Hikikomori Board, I thought it would be much easier to copy paste a single post than rewrite several versions.

Why even make this thread if those threads exist?

Maybe it’s just luck or maybe it’s just frustration but ever since those threads, I haven’t really continued focusing on the problems we Hikikomori face. To be honest, I really don’t know what other topic to make that would interest Hikikomoris.

When I first registered here, I thought at the very least, it would help both me and the English-speaking Hikikomori community as a whole focus on what problems and solutions we might encounter. In essence, I thought it would help simplify my ignorance of my fellow Hikikomoris. Well, the opposite happened and it made me feel like I might be out of touch with the average Hikikomori so I just had to be sure but at the same time I didn’t know what topic to make…

A few problems that just further confused the issue for me are:

The opposing goals of a hikikomori who wants to stay as one and one who wants to get on with their lives - through a job or school, etc. (This I at least expected prior to registering)
The case for what stands for a fake hikikomori from a real one (This I didn’t expect. I at least thought that a hikikomori would say they couldn’t remain as one when they got out so they’re forced to be a former hikikomori rather than the varying degrees of hikikomoris perspective.)
The large gap between English and Japanese Hikikomoris (Again, this was something I didn’t expect. I thought that there would at least have been more of an attempt by someone who understood both languages to connect both worlds even if it was only for Hikikomori-specific threads.)
My general ignorance of my fellow Hikikomoris in general (I thought that by being part of a Hikikomori forum, I would learn more about the resources and mannerisms of a general Hikikomori and instead it seemed like any forum, I knew more about the personal details of users I agree with and as much as I love talking to you guys - you know who you are - it kind of blew my bubbled ideology that I could replace actual real life befriending of Hikikomoris - the likes which are unknown in my country except for a google search of this blog: http://hikikomoriden.wordpress.com/ but somehow it doesn’t seem to talk about any Hikikomori issues - and use this forum as a padding point to be informed of the Hikikomori cause as opposed to trying to do in-depth research most of which would most likely be in Japanese.)
The case between the difference of an Otaku and that of a Hikikomori (I’ll be honest, I thought more Hikikomoris would be sensitive to the subtle differences between these two but it seems there aren’t as much of that concern. At least I haven’t read any kinds of topic like that over here and in general many seems to have otaku-related interests except for a few of us. - I’m interested in anime and mangas but I haven’t dwelved deep into it to be considered an otaku much less a knowledgeable casual fan of modern anime.)
The case of Hikikomoris trolling Hikikomoris (All forums have trolls so I at least should have expected that but what I didn’t expect was Hikikomori being a magnet for trolls. I know of at least one account in the AnonIB Hiki Board where an admin threatened to ban a guy for reporting about multiple people impersonating him. I’ve also conversed with a troll here who would even go to the extent of editing his posts to make his harsh words seem friendly and also the chat has been visited by a troll who accused everyone here of not being a hikikomori because they didn’t use imageboards exclusively and hence aren’t Anonymous enough to be considered Hikikomoris.)

As luck would have it, a troll would come by to chat one day and point out that 2chan was the hang-out for Japanese Hikikomoris and while some of you have told me that 2chan is just similar to 4chan, the seed was already planted that it couldn’t hurt attempting to try and communicate with Japanese Hikikomoris even if it means the only 2chan channel I know of is /b/ and I’m going to use 4chan’s interface to try and paste this English text into 2chan and hopefully someone there would know both languages and can share their opinion over here.

Later on I would learn about the AnonIB Hikikomori Board and my introduction post here seems to be well received enough plus it made me start trying to use imageboards again.

Further luck later on, Namaesukawanae would send me her survey and what I originally thought to be a basic questionnaire where I would just copy paste parts of my post from elsewhere in this forum turned into a longer yet more related to my views of Hikikomori version rather than a gray issue of trying to accomodate or ask all Hikikomoris like my threads above.As if to confirm that this was at least a useful thing to do, Namae would tell me that she could translate the survey into Japanese (though she doesn’t have time to translate my answers because of the length) so posting on 2chan seems to be worth a shot even though it might open Pandora’s Box and increase more trolls coming here due to the nation of /b/ if 4chan’s /b/ was a referencing point.

Anyways, here are my answers to Namae’s survey:

How do you define “hikikomori”? Who do you consider to be a hikikomori?

Hikikomori for me in a summary, is (if a summary is possible) simply one who prioritizes their Honne over Tatemae but because the world often works around the balance of Tatemae/Honne even in mainstream civilizations where people are taught what honesty is but is raised in an environment where the unwritten rule is to never strive to be honest (but to praise people who do live a life of pure honesty) causes an imbalance which gets in the way with their communication of fellow beings. This communication problem though is very similar to mild autism or ADHD, in that it seems like they talk normal and could even be considered great at talking.

However I believe a true hikikomori would soon find out that when they try to actually communicate with something that is less orthodox to the other person. I.E. they try to take a friendship to the next level, there are certain mishaps that happen that they fail at delivering the message no matter how sincere or detailed they are. This goes back to the example in this link that shows that even when balanced, Honne can often cause trouble especially around people who do not trust you or are not really interested in your Honne self or simply are sound absorbers and the details of a Honne conversation makes it impossible for them to drown the Hikikomori out and thus they react negatively to the Hikikomori.This causes the Hikikomori to keep receiving such negative feedbacks that they become introverted hermits especially in their mind. The thing that separates them from a mere introvert or a hermit though is both the modern progress of technology that culminated in the internet and the continued decay of society to the point that we are now noticing the effects at a much wider range that someone can now dub this as a “phenomena”. But at the same time because the Japanese culture is more of a meccha of these factors, it got more noticeable in Japan first which coincided with the adaptation of the word “Hikikomori” there.

Unfortunately, as you probably noted in my post here if you’ve read it, Honne/Tatemae is simply not valued enough in mainstream society to discuss even among Hikikomoris so there’s a good chance that eventually the growth of people living indoors will hijack the term into a more general more indoor-type NEET or even a fad or excuse for staying at home and even worse, an excuse for a person who just once stayed indoors but is now out or is out due to school or a job.That’s why it’s a very volatile term and it’s a very dangerous term and that’s why in this reply I wrote to you, I was very elitist with the term. However at the same time, it’s also why when someone in the chat room came and said we aren’t hikis because we don’t try to be anonymous in the internet or try to converse here so we’re not shy, I also went against his elitist opinion of it because I’m not saying that a strict definition of hikikomori should be adopted. Simply that A definition of hikikomori should be adapted and we can’t just willy nilly accept anyone who calls themselves hikikomoris especially if there’s a strong indication that they might have just led an introverted lifestyle. I mean you don’t call someone who vacationed for a month in the mountains a hermit, so why should we be so lax with who should be called a hikikomori especially if they can cause people to be desensitized towards the true and more painful yet subtle issues a true hikikomori has experienced and needs support or a discussion on? We can’t afford people “graying” the issues of Hikikomori so much because we became a homogenized melting pot for anyone who wants to stay at home.

Based off of that, in your opinion, are you a hikikomori?
(if yes) How do you see this? (i.e., is it a problem or a lifestyle or maybe just a temporary status?)

I actually posted two related posts about this yesterday.

Here I addressed what kind of Hikikomori degree I had experienced according to that official chart as well as some criticism of the chart.Here I addressed how long I’ve been a Hikikomori and alluded to the fact that I lived the life before I knew the term.

That’s why my answer is mostly leaning yes but I believe in order to address the validity of one fitting a vague term, one must be able to address how he also fits the no category. In fact, it’s why when you asked “Who do you consider to be a hikikomori?”, I thought the better question was “Who do I consinder to NOT be a hikikomori?” because it’s not only more falsifiable but it now puts the hikikomori to the task of matching who they are with their definition of hikikomoris. This way if they’re faking it either deliberately or because they fooled themselves into thinking they were, at best, they would be forced to admit that their not really a hardcore hikikomori and hopefully if enough people admit to this, then casual people would start realizing that these people might not even be the average norm for a hikikomori.As for why I could possibly be someone other than a hikikomori:

I usually don’t focus on where I am as much as what I can do with the current place I am in. That’s why I’m not really someone who doesn’t want to go out, I’m just someone who because of my communication problems and the better resource of the internet combined with the subsidies my parent raised me in, simply found that the pro of staying in for now outweighs the battle of going out.But that’s also the problem of the hikikomori definition. It assumes we are “out” when we’re not locked in our homes but as a society, we have slowly degraded into a people who wants “in”. We want our children to be “IN” schools. We often sacrificed our dreams to get jobs that involve being “IN” a building. We often asked our federal governments to be our mommies and daddies (except by name) to take us “IN” their social welfare-ized states and countries.

To make things worse, we as a society in general, throw the baby out with the bathwater and accused people of wanting to be “free” to really just secretly want their paradise and not have any responsibility and to make things worse, many in society who has been weakened by the “pussified” society is raising us, really just think “free” is something rewarded as opposed to be earned so the end result is that we have an “IN” society that’s not accomodating the “OUT” society but instead is metaphorically punishing these “OUT” minded people either verbally, physically, mentally or even beneficially.This creates a problem where hikikomoris are only a subset of the problem but also become the scapegoat of the problem with the in-fighting by many Hikikomoris to be “OUT” when what they really are battling for and how they are really cured is by being conformed to be “IN” but the conformed mainstream society of “IN” as opposed to what their Honne identity really interprets as “IN”. In essence, they don’t really want to consider what their choices have been, they simply want to stop, be happy until they drop in this world and someone next time gets dealt with the same hand and then it’s not their problem anymore. They just want to be “babied” but not babied enough that people perceive them to be a baby. (cont. below)

Are you interested in changing this or just learning how to live with it?

It’s because of this problem which is why I choose to neither quit being a Hikikomori nor stay as a Hikikomori. I think anthropology has shown that many indigenous cultures are dying but it’s only natural that before total globalization kills all independent identity, some new upstart culture arises in some corners of the world. Most of them internet related cultures so to me it’s no surprise that Hikikomoris would be linked to indoors because many of our new cultures are based around the internet except Hikikomoris are one of the first that has also real world attributes along with the “Stay at home” culture and the “Homeschooling” culture and the “Startup Programmer that builds a site that generates millions” culture. We’re just more socially related because our problem is often socially related.

But there’s a reason many indigenous cultures are dying even if each has some specific wiser and better developed mindset in some concepts of our society (like some tribes not seeing a specific color). It’s because they haven’t adapted. It’s just an extension of the Spanish Inquisition or World War 2 or colonies. Except now, it’s shifted into different kinds of invasion due to both the globalizing effect of technology and the social decay of society and the new rules we made to accomodate justifying the existence of our over-popularized species without taking serious considerations of it on the casual mainstream level.That’s why even if I don’t know the next level of Hikikomori progress, I won’t and can’t stay as Hikikomoris now nor would I be better off conforming even further and sacrificing my identity in favor of just becoming another less independent human being and sacrificing the future of not only hikikomoris but all independent-wanting people. In that sense, one can say I made it my lifestyle even though my environment made me adapt this lifestyle and I just happen to prioritize taking that into consideration as opposed to just ignoring why I became this way and using those knowledge to grow from that branch as opposed to returning to the decaying stem and cutting off the branch to be among the ones who caused me to become a Hikikomori in the first place.

There are a variety of hikikomori ranging from those who don’t leave their room to those who just don’t interact with people any mroe than they need to in person. To what extent are you a hikikomori?

As with one of the posts I linked above, apparently the most I have been a Hikikomori is to be rank A in degree according to the unnoficial test.

How do you feel around people?

I feel they are just like me. I need to find cues to better communicate with them and some would say be their friends but even though I’m not a sociopath, the recent “friend-addiction” of MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn pretty much revealled to me that in general most humans just want to “network” rather than be friends so I try to stick to the quote of “It’s better to be friendly than to have friends.” and just be that way.

I often am in a negative environment (to me) though and so what I do is I rust the bridges anytime there’s a risk of having people know my parents because I live with them. Even my friends. So usually I’m a lonely person that people stay away from or else I’m forced to lose them or I already lost them before that once they know me better.That’s why I tend to not interact with people much but in general, I don’t feel bad about them. In fact, I love listening and gaining perspectives from all living beings even though I’m neither an Aristotle who looks at all manners of species or a Socrates who talks and converses with an insane person in the streets.

Do you have any conditions that might have lead to your becoming a hikikomori or,if you answered no to the last overall qustion, becoming interested in hikikomori?I’ve never been diagnosed with a personality disorder and an EEG said I was fine. I wouldn’t rely on that though. Nowadays every person gets diagnosed with a social disorder plus I never went to regular check-ups and many people have admitted that I act abnormal and in fact when I lived with my cousins, they had to tell me what I was doing weird so that I can pick up on it and act more “conformed”.

As for being interested, I just stick to who I am and it happens that I’m a hikikomori or possessed qualities like it so I just settle for that tag and use that to know more people that are like me as well as to verify how similar and how different those people are from me to make sure that I do indeed fit the profile.

Do you have any friends or fammily that are also hikikomori? (excluding anyone here, that is)

To my knowledge, no. Also I never bothered asking because by the time I knew the word, I pretty much didn’t have any friends in real life nor was I close to my family and my relatives, well…the ones I contacted never replied in IM even though it was for a different topic and the others, I just push away.

If you feel being a hikikomori is a problem, do you have any suggestions on how to “solve” it?
If you don’t fel that being a hikikomori is a problem, do you have any suggestions on how to live happily as one?

Those two actually work hand in hand. The latter question can be a solution to the former question.

As for solving it. Specifically not yet. That’s why I’m trying to get to know Hikikomoris. As a theme though, I believe progress is the answer.To get an idea of what I mean, I give you this exerpt from a Gamefaqs FAQ on Alpha Centauri:

To give that advantage some kind of tangible reference point, make the blanket assumption that an improved (terraformed) piece of real estate will net you 2 FOP’s (factors of production - energy, nutrient, or mineral) over and above what non-improved land square will net you. Multiply that by 6-10 (from above - the number of “free” terraforming turns you can expect to get over and above your opponent, and we will assume ten, for simplicity’s sake), and further multiply that by the number of bases (formers, specifically) you’ve got. Whatever number you get is a fairly good estimate of the total advantage you’ve netted yourself (ie., If you have ten bases, each with a rushed former, your estimated advantage using the formula above would be (2*10) * 10 = 200 FOP’s. If you consider that a Trance Scout Patrol costs you 10 FOP’s (10 minerals, specifically), you begin to put the advantage in perspective. Of course, not all 200 of your FOP’s will be in the form of minerals. Likely, they will be a mixed bag of all three, but that’s okay too, because what it really means is that, relative to your opponent, your bases will produce more minerals more quickly, give you more money, and grow faster (which will enable you to make even MORE bases!).

Therefore the law of progress simply put that if Hikikomoris were to progress at a faster rate than all other cultures, the net effect will be that the world will find it more tolerable to deal with Hikikomoris because there seems to be an upside in being one. (No different than the world tolerating the torture of people so that the survivors can become Marines that will fight for them even though it’s really just another way for the government to produce an effective weapon.)

P.S. Do you mind if I post this in the public board? I really want to know how many agree with my vision and what the critics have to say about my answers.

I say premature because as my follow-up reply would allude to, I double-posted this topic in the old AnonIB /hikki/ board but unfortunately the link is dead and I haven’t reached this portion of anonarchive to be able refer to all the notable replies of that side. (As you probably found out if you clicked the link, alot of the links require registration. That’s because Hiki-PhpBB is a private forum and besides the two board communities never quite getting along, this was the other reason why I tend to double-post my topics.)

Update: My post on AnonIB was successful here: http://anonib.com/hikki/index.php?t=185

Unfortunately I could get through 2chan and got this message when I try posting in the /b/ channel: http://www.2chan.net/b/futaba.php?guid=on

It’s all in Japanese so I couldn’t understand anything about it.Edit: Apparently 2chan checks for the ip address of the sender and only Japanese people are allowed to post there.

End Quote

Some might say there was no need for me to directly quote my old post in order to answer Name’s question — especially if this was going to be an incomplete thread. It might even have been more sincere if I rewrote the points instead of relying on old and possibly outdated words I wrote months ago.

Not to mention the fact that Name knows me from AnonIB and that there was a good chance that he already read this thread because this was my first thread in there.

These are all valid criticisms. I just felt that there was something equally sincere about the raw form of quoting. It allows readers beyond Name to get a glimpse of things they normally might not think of asking but would equally want to know from my answer. It allows them an unfiltered look at my old impressions and compare them to my newer ones without relying on what I said has changed on face value.It even allows one to get a glimpse of my impatience and how I am rarely one to queue a topic when an opportunity arises to address it in a more detailed form. Similarly, this is why I tend to give the impression of posting in a long manner. I just have an extreme dislike for holding back information — even if these information are not necessarily related directly to the issue or non-opinionated — because these details are often what inspires a society to critically think about the issues. No matter how mundane and boring, an intentionally long and boring ego-boosting technical talk is not equivalent to a long and boring sincere appeal to communicate. A society that ignores this is a society that promotes a much more subtler anxiety disorder that makes people afraid of addressing serious issues. Sure, no one feels they’re getting dumber from being intolerant of long texts but no one is feeling the urgency each information brings either.

Details are there to open yourself up to flaws. Flaws are there to provide the balance and remind us that we’re still human (and not a human encyclopedia). Balance is there to remind us of the necessity of information. When this is reversed in the search for crisper and better presented texts, balance is lost because little details are sacrificed for simple statements. Simple statements reduces the chance of encountering flaws. The lack of flaws gives incentive to praise less human qualities. Less human in the sense that, instead of understanding that valid information makes us more intelligent, we seek instead to scare those who we deem as possessing ignorant information because they must be punished for being imperfect. Punish them because they must be Gods (or at the very least marketers) who must always share information perfectly. Punish them because we are Gods who must strive for spouting the perfect information. Not in substance but at least perfect enough for quick consumption.

The net effect is that instead of there being a large room for information, there is very little room for information except those stated by the highest of Gods, the experts and the social leaders.

Today

Judging by the meta-data, I wrote the above during Sept. 23, 2009.

Nowadays I can’t say my opinions have changed but the futility and lack of producing anything concrete for hikikomories is getting to me.

It’s also bothered me that for the most part, news of Hikikomori have been quiet.

Not that it was noisy to begin with but in my opinion the hardest part, ideals-wise, is to have people and expectations further bring down one’s sense of urgency.

Not that it’s anyone’s fault but my own for expecting something…”not different”…but… more of substance within people who have the same label as mine.

I think it’s nice though that the Hikikomori board on AnonIB have become more of a social setting-type of forum and hey, maybe it’s just because I’m not very good at stumbling upon communities but in a way I think it’s also part of my ideal as a Hikikomori.

What I mean by this is that even though online communities are more suited for technological or event organizing support to produce something collaboratively concrete, to have an ideal or goal for Hikikomories is at the same time to have hope that Hikikomories would have interests in working together with other fellow Hikikomories in something that they both agree with and are sincerely wanting to contribute to.

A good example is the idea that Hikikomories would work together to afford and maintain a house that’s collaboratively paid for by their fellow Hikikomories.

The idea is not to my taste and the comment I’m referring to was written in a jokingly wishful thinking way anyway and I’m just using it as an example of “concrete collaboration”.

Then again it’s my own fault for being un-talented, un-focused and not guiding by example but I think this is why this is how my ideal is and how it directs my goals towards Hikikomories.

My ideal can be summed up in one word which is “belonging”.

I value freedom the most even though I don’t understand nor possess a literary knowledge of freedom but I see Hikikomori as a path that’s among the safest choices to take.

That is, it’s an unpopular path - but it doesn’t harm anybody else. Not the choice of social withdrawal at least.

Most of the harm comes when the socially withdrawn is forced against their liberty…and they are no good at… performing the socially acceptable way of retaliation or avoidance of pain. (Especially mental pain.)

So that’s my goal…

To have helped set up an era where it’s easy for people to become hikikomories not because there are tips, support forums or welfare given to them but because Hikikomori is more accepted and therefore easier to move to and away from.

…and if Hikikomori is more accepted, Hikikomories become less jailed people in the sense of feeling like they have to live their life as a battle between their wants and society’s wants but more of…just a path.

A path with different but equal opportunities to grow and improve and mingle with similar like-minded people.

As the quote goes: “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.”

That’s pretty much “it” for me. Not just as a Hikikomori but as an individual.

For me, there’s a battle out there and it’s the battle of consciousness.

A battle to realize that there are many out there that are oppressed physically and a battle to realize that there are many out there that lead to physical oppression because we let ourselves be blinded by our mentality.

For every genocide, there’s someone committing suicide.

For every slavery, there’s being trapped in tradition.

For every freedom, there’s being lured in a self-induced cycle of life-decaying pleasure. (and by life, I mean beyond just our own physical body)

…and within those big issues lies the small conundrums. The small things that could easily be worked upon by a group that wasn’t worked upon and thus became big.

I apologize if I’m equating racism and women and gay rights with Hikikomori but to me, these are “biologically” minor issues to fix and they are testament that it takes years just to fix them because it takes years just for someone to rally everyone around accepting people that are different and have chosen different paths that do not directly harm them or limit their freedom and that’s why belonging is my ideal for Hikikomories because even though we as a group can not unanimously say we have been oppressed in the same way as those popular minority issues because of our location divisiveness and isolation, I see that division as also easily making things much more complicated not only to us individually but to people who one day grows up and chooses to be Hikikomories too.

I see the division as preventing us from developing Hikikomori giants whose shoulders we can stand upon and limits us to being crybabies whose shoulders we merely used for other Hikikomories to simply cry on and explain their situation to each other and I hate it.

I hate it because I know first hand how difficult it is to be un-talented and how easy it is to make up for your lack of talent by having a wide network of people that understand how you can make up for it because of their own experiences and shortcomings and I like to prevent people similar to me to suffer my predicament while having less or equal opportunities to mine because that’s not enough.

It isn’t good enough for the non-Hikikomori world and it isn’t good enough for Hikikomories especially those who find themselves in a bad spot so why not do something to convince Hikikomories of that opportunity to fix our universal belonging problem. After all, it’s not a task that requires talent it’s a task that requires the urgency of desperation so even if all I can do is say a sentence, my lack of talent, dedication and knowledge is irrelevant over the need for this to happen.

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Copy-Paste: Dangerous Knowledge

Thu, 06 May 2010 23:31:24 -0400

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Visual Novels..."are" Complicated!!!

Wed, 05 May 2010 04:39:22 -0400

I was saving this topic so I can write my in-depth feelings for why I feel certain games of this genre deserves to be included in this blog but a recent post on anonib, made me list the titles here anyway.

My apologies for not going in-depth with these choices especially since I haven’t played lots of these yet: How do you see the world itself where we live in? It truly cannot be compared with even the simplest scenario of a small Visual Novel. The world we live in, it is so…imperfect, bitter and cruel.

How do you see the world itself where we live in? It truly cannot be compared with even the simplest scenario of a small Visual Novel. The world we live in, it is so…imperfect, bitter and cruel. You don’t get a decent school-life , where you see your schoolmates who greet you warmly. You don’t have a charming sister who wakes you every morning with a bittersweet smile. You regret your memorable first kiss if you even had one. The image of a attractive girl that lines you being besides you as she presses her arm towards you is just a mere illusion. It’s not real. Nobody will confess to you that they actually like you. You won’t even be able to go on a date. Nobody cherishes those sweet little emotions. And romance, it is dead in the eyes of almost everyone. A mere emptiness, they do not understand it. You can’t even make a choice between multiple girls , since you won’t pick any of them, since they aren’t even worthy of fitting your strict-expectations, it’s out of the question.
You cannot make a save game and revert things back at the beginning if something bad and terrible happens.
Because that thing has already happened. You cannot revert it. You cannot rewind your memories. To be exact, you didn’t have anything or anyone to begin with. You were always alone. A bitter, unlikable loner. Who’s passing shall not be mourned. You were struggling all alone in the corner on the school hallway. There was nobody there for you. There was no one, there wasn’t anything.
-
No. I do not know what I am even trying to say or prove. It’s just my mixed thoughts that tried to construct something which came quite broken.
And of course, sorry for my BAD English.

No…just no.Here’s a list of free Visual Novels I recommend the poster download and play:

It’s the summer before you go away to college, and you’re spending it visiting with your aunt and uncle on a small island in the Atlantic ocean. One night, while out taking pictures of the full moon, you meet a girl walking down the beach…Moonlight Walks: http://www.bishoujo.us/moonlight/

Yoshiyuki left everything behind to start a new life. Moving to the far away Shinrin City, everything is new. All is so calm, and so pure. Several years later however, the situation is very different. Ori, Ochi, Onoe: http://www.renai.us/game/o3.shtml

Once there was a troubled little boy. A very pampered, yet troubled little boy. All the spoils of the earth were his to be had at the snap of a finger. Yet, there was something missing.

Fade: http://www.renai.us/game/fade.shtmlStarlight is a relationship and decision game based on the idea that managing relationships can be interesting even if they are not romantic. Actually in Starlight there are romantic overtones and some fanservice, but that’s just cause I can’t resist it! However the basic theme remains that a person in a position of leadership must manage personalities and conflicting expectations to get everyone to succeed.

Starlight Episode Zero: http://www.adorablerockets.com/?p=714A chance meeting between a down-to-earth farmer and an idealistic young boy can change how both view the world around them.

The Boy Who Loved Crows: http://www.renai.us/game/tbwlc.shtmlAfter leaving behind everyone he had ever known to attend a new middle school, Allen learns the harsh reality that he can never again regain what he has lost. The rift between himself and others has become too large to overcome. And the expanse only widens, day by day. As the years pass by, Allen falls deeper and deeper into isolation. Until one day, a single smile in a sea of faces calls out to him…
Tying Threads: http://www.renai.us/game/t_threads.shtmlA rash of recent suicides and the only clue are these mysterious death organs. A man with no purpose to his life tries and prevents these people from killing themselves. He teams up with another hostel resident who has her own weird gift, but first he must undergo a strange procedure called trepanation.

Some doctors believe that trepanation can increase your brain power and improve academic and career performance, as well as give heightened consciousness. But unconscious starts to take over, giving a strange kind of clarity of the world beneath what we interpret with our eyes.

Trepanation: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3401

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Word: Low Latent Inhibition

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:52:25 -0400

Just a word I recently found out that may lead to social withdrawal. (…or it may not, there’s no definitive study connecting the two)http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/001684.html

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Latent_inhibition http://highlysensitive.org/64/highly-sensitive-people-latent-inhibition-and-creativity/

http://the-mouse-trap.blogspot.com/2009/05/low-latent-inhibition-high-faith-in.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_inhibition

“Scientists have wondered for a long time why madness and creativity seem linked,” says Carson. “It appears likely that low levels of latent inhibition and exceptional flexibility in thought might predispose to mental illness under some conditions and to creative accomplishment under others.”

Most people are able to ignore the constant stream of incoming stimuli, but this capability is reduced in those with low latent inhibition. It is hypothesized that a low level of latent inhibition can cause either psychosis or a high level of creative achievement^[3] or both, which is usually dependent on the subject’s intelligence.^[4]^[2] Those of above average intelligence are thought to be capable of processing this stream effectively, enabling their creativity. Those with less than average intelligence, on the other hand, are less able to cope, and so as a result are more likely to suffer from mental illness.^[5]

Previously, scientists have associated failure to screen out stimuli with psychosis. However, Peterson and his co-researchers - lead author and psychology lecturer Shelley Carson of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard PhD candidate Daniel Higgins - hypothesized that it might also contribute to original thinking, especially when combined with high IQ. They administered tests of latent inhibition to Harvard undergraduates. Those classified as eminent creative achievers - participants under age 21 who reported unusually high scores in a single area of creative achievement - were seven times more likely to have low latent inhibition scores.

In recent years, low latent inhibition is being looked at as less of a mental disorder; in the past it was often confused with schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, and even depression, and almost all cases of misdiagnoses have been known to lead to over-medicated individuals.^{[citation needed]} In some cases, these individuals have had adverse reactions to the intended medicines.^{[citation needed]} In contrast to certain popular depictions, low latent inhibition is not a mental disorder but an observed personality trait, and a description of how an individual absorbs and assimilates data or stimuli. Furthermore, it does not necessarily lead to mental disorder or creative achievement—this is, like many other factors of life, a case of environmental and predispositional influences, whether these be positive (e.g., education) or negative (e.g., abuse) in nature.

“Throughout our daily lives we experience an influx of emotions, sensations, and sounds,” he writes. “If we had to consciously decide at all times what to ignore and what to pay attention to, we would quickly become overstimulated.
“This ability to screen things out of awareness that were previously tagged as irrelevant is called latent inhibition. Latent inhibition has a strong biological basis and operates automatically to filter out information.
“Those high in latent inhibition are very good at this inhibition. Those with a reduced latent inhibition have a difficult time with this form of inhibition. Reduced latent inhibition has been associated with schizophrenia as well as a predisposition to psychosis.”

Peterson et al. (2002) argued that individual differences in a tendency toward exploratory behavior and cognition may be related to the activity of the mesolimbic dopamine system and predispose an individual to perceive even preexposed stimuli as interesting and novel, resulting in low LI. Moreover, under stressful or novel conditions, the dopamine system in these individuals will become more activated and the individual will instigate exploratory behavior. Under such conditions, decreased LI could help the individual by allowing him or her more options for reconsideration and thereby more ways to resolve the incongruity. It could also be disadvantageous in that the stressed individual risks becoming overwhelmed with possibilities. Research has shown that the combination of high IQ and reduced LI predicts creative achievement (Carson et al., 2003). Therefore, the individual predisposed to schizophrenia may suffer from an influx of experiential sensations and possess insufficient executive functioning to cope with the influx, whereas the healthy individual low in LI and open to experience (particularly an openness and faith in his or her gut feelings) may be better able to use the information effectively while not becoming overwhelmed or stressed out by the incongruity of the situation. Clearly, further research will need to investigate these ideas, but an understanding of the biological basis of individual differences in different forms of implicit processing and their relationship to openness to experience and intuition will surely increase our understanding of how certain individuals attain the highest levels of creative accomplishment.

“After all, decreased LI may make an individual more likely to see connections that others may not notice. Prominent psychologists such as Hans Eysenck and Colin Martindale have argued for the importance of disinhibition for creative thought.

Erika Harris says:
03.16.09 at 7:48 am
As an HSP, I identify with having decreased LI. And I imagine most HSPs would. Even when we would very much like to filter out excess stimuli from our environments, our nervous systems keep feeding us the data and sensory inputs… regardless if we feel quite full. So, it seems since we don’t have access to *inner* LI, we place special emphasis on *outer* LI — we create sanctuaries for ourselves… quiet spaces… regenerative nooks where we can give our neurons a much needed break.
This was a very thought-provoking article. Thank you for it, and all of the treasures here.

A less able mind has a greater need to be able to filter out and ignore stimuli. A less intelligent person with a low level of latent inhibition for filtering out familiar stimuli may well sink into mental illness as a result. But a smarter mind can handle the effects of taking note of a larger number of stimuli and even find interesting and useful patterns by continually processing a larger quantity of familiar information.

Note from the text of the full paper that stress causes the release of the hormone corticosterone which lowers latent inhibition. In a nutshell, when an organism runs into problems that cause stress the resulting release of stress hormones causes the mind to shift into a state where it will examine factors in the environment that it normally ignores. This allows the organism to look for solutions to the stress-causing problem that would be ignored in normal and less stressed circumstances.

So perhaps we could hypothesize something like this:under stressful conditions,or in person-ality conﬁgurations characterized by increased novelty-sensitivity,approach behavior,and DA activity, decreased LI is associated with increased permeability and ﬂexibility of functional cog- nitive and perceptual category [see Barsalou (1983)for a discussion of such categories ].Imagine a situation where current plans are not producing desired outcomes —a situation where current categories of perception and cognition are in error, from the pragmatic perspective. Something anomalous or novel emerges as a consequence (Peterson,1999), and drives exploratory behavior. Stress or trait-dependent decreased LI, under such circumstances, could produce increased signal (as well as noise), with regards to the erroneous pattern of behavior and the anomaly that it produced. This might oﬀer the organism, currently enmeshed in the consequences of mistaken presuppositions, the possibility of gathering new information, where nothing but categorical certainty once existed. Decreased LI might therefore be regarded as advantageous, in that it allows for the perception of more unlikely, radical and numerous options for reconsideration, but disadvantageous in that the stressed or approach-oriented person risks ‘‘drowning in possibility,’’ to use Kierkegaard ’s phrase.

One can easily see how this response could have been selected for evolutionarily. At the same time, one can also see how chronic stress could lead a person to fall into a state of confusion as a sustained large flood of stimuli could overwhelm the brain by giving it too much to think about and make a person unable to clearly see solutions that will relieve the feeling of stress.

Additional:1. This isn’t related but it might add to my post here so I’m linking the two each other.

2. Fictional but some might feel it adds to the above (it’s also what led me to the wiki article): http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SherlockScan Sherlock Scan

A device used to introduce a detective character and his skills. The detective mentions some fact about the person he’s just met, something that is not immediately obvious and he has no way of knowing (“Quitting cigs looks like it was good for you”, “How’s the wedding planning going?”). The other character looks skeptical or surprised, then the detective describes his reasoning from a set of minor clues (state and style of clothes, marks on skin, etc.) and consequent assumptions. Note that this is often cited as a demonstration of a detective’s deductive ability (reaching a conclusion via a connected, logical chain of observations) when in fact, this is an example of inductive reasoning (reaching a conclusion via a series of generalised observations) and is far less logically sound. (Of course, this is also the sort of evidential reasoning employed during most scientific experiments. The result of such induction is a likely solution, but not necessarily the only solution.)

3. The orchid-dandelion effect: http://the-mouse-trap.com/2010/03/31/stress-and-neurogenesis-the-orchid-dandelion-effect/ I would first like to briefly summarize the findings of the study:

chronic stress paradigm used was that of social defeat (cohabitation with a socially dominant conspecific). 10 days of this social defeat were administered. this typically leads to social avoidance behaviors and these behaviors are correlated with other depressive phenotypes.
after 10 days when social avoidance (time interacting with a potential friendly con-specific) was measured it was found that about half the mice exhibited social avoidance and were sensitive to the stress; the rest of the half were ‘resilient’ and did not differ from control mice (not exposed to chronic social defeat) in their social avoidance.
all mice, both resilient and sensitive , showed decreased proliferation in subgranular zone (SGZ) for new cells immediately after stress exposure. This effect disappeared / normalised after 24 hrs.
Cell survival for cells created before stress exposure was not affected by stress exposure.
cell survival for neurons created 1 day after stress exposure was enhanced selectively for those mice that were susceptible or sensitive to stress, but was not enhanced for the resilient mice or the mice taken as a whole.
when the mice were irradiated, before stress exposure, to prevent neurogenesis, then the social avoidance behavior, even in susceptible mice disappeared. It is thus evident that social avoidance is mediated by increased neurogenesis post-stress exposure in the susceptibel mice.

Overall, the results I believe are clearly in favor of conceptualizing the susceptible mice as ‘orchid’ mice – having enhanced tendency for neurogenisis following positive/negative events of interests. they are biologically sensitive to context and exhibit neurogenesis reactivity similar to stress reactivity shown by orchid children. Given a positive life experience the increased neurogenesis post-event helps in having happy memories and cognition s and better functioning; preponderance of negative life vents in contrast lead to more negative and longlasting cognitions and memories leading to reduced functioning. Of course the dandelion mice are resilient and not that much affected by chronic stress. However, they would also not be able to make best use of environment in good conditions.

The only hiccup I see in the whole scheme of things is the effect of anti-depressants on neurogenesis and my earlier theorizing that cells may die under repetitive stress and reduced or absent neurogenisis would be a prime factor in depression. However, the relation between neurogenesis and stress will be , I am sure, complex and needs to be settled empirically, rather than theoretically. However one thing is clear, neurogenesis has a rpime role to play in depression , mediated perhaps by, chronic stress exposure and genetic diatheisis (orchid-dandelion effect).

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Dream: Legs Giving Out

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:22:34 -0400

Not sure if this is a Hikikomori related dream and I didn’t check any online dream dictionary nor have I read a hiki dream topic to gauge any similarity but it feels like one so I’m adding it here.I just woke up due to this dream btw so maybe it was more of “wake up” dream than a hikikomori-related one.

At the time I wasn’t a Hikikomori yet, the main public transportation were jeepneys rather than taxis because of their cost. Even buses were only preferred if the travelling distance is huge.On one hand, this meant the backseat passengers were always crowded and you have to slouch and walk a bit just to get off but on the positive, I’ve never experienced the crowded buses I’ve seen in movies like Employee of the Month (The Matt Dillon One)

Although we do have crowded buses. Just not to the extent where you literally get squeezed off from coming down because no one would give you room to move or you’re seated to a guy who will inch up on you. (Although my reference are only comedic movies so I maybe stereotyping much.) Anyway to get an idea of how the back of the jeepney looks like, here’s a pic:

Now the common way to get off is to of course wait for the jeepney to stop but on occasion I would jump off just as the vehicle was slowing down. (It was rare for me to do that but as an obese guy with a schoolbag on his back, I’ve had 1 or 2 times where even if the car was slow I still fell down on the road from jumping and had to roll my body to the sidewalk.)

Anyway, the setting of this dream was a path to my old house and to my first school. Maybe it’s because in my 2nd school I was tired or had enough satisfaction in life to not need that sort of minor high from jumping off a jeepney when it’s just slowing down but it could also be because in my 2nd school I was living elsewhere where the road was more of a highway and the jeepneys where mostly neve doing a slow stop until they reach their destination. It was either dawn or mid-afternoon and along with my biological father who was escorting me home, we met a classmate of mine and decided to ride the same vehicle.

I guess for some reason we have to switch vehicles mid-way. (This happens when a jeepney is too crowded that you opt for any non-crowded jeepney you can find at the price of it not going all the way to your home.) In the dream, the jeepney was heavily crowded and I was sitted further to the front of the back area and so when I tried walking down, the jeepney ended up driving away leaving only me in the car. (This does happen in real life but it’s so rare because the driver can easily see from the rearview mirror if someone was going down.)

Anyways so I’m stuck there crouching and waiting for the jeepney to stop so I can get off but I got impatient and waited for it to only slow down and as I was about to jump off, a car from behind closed in on the jeepney and I was shouting profanities and wondering why the car did that. Somewhere someone shouted “One Training Time” and I was too busy focusing on jumping off so I didn’t see who it was but I think it was the jeepney driver.

I remember thinking “Wtf?!” and asked a nearby passenger what One Training Time was. The passenger would then explain that it was a way to test a jumper’s timing so they don’t get ran off by a car.

Anyway the jeepney was slowly turning a corner and it would have led to a different location by then so I jumped off. (Sometimes jeepneys would turn a corner first before letting a passenger get off but since I don’t know enough of where the stop spots are, I usually just jumped off.) I then immediately ran to the railing/sidewalk but since the railing blocked off the road and the entrance required running slightly to the front and turning a corner where there is no railing, I had to run forward and back first because there was still a line of road in between me.

So I basically ran forward, realized I wasn’t going to reach the railing opening without getting in the way of the 1st lane jeepney and forcing them to slow down so I switched to the 2nd lane where I got off and where a car had already passed me and then as I was switching to the 1st lane, I miscalculated and saw the spacing wasn’t right so I leaped backwards and fell. At this point, I had already inconvenienced the 2nd lane car which was another jeepney because it had to make a full stop in order to not run me over. (It also had to veer slightly to the left so now the third lane cars also had to stop.)

I felt horrible from creating traffic and tried to stand up before I realize I couldn’t. Somehow my legs didn’t have the energy to lift me up. I was so frustrated and had to pull my rubber shoes off and kinda punch slap my legs and tried jumping up. As soon I was able to become vertical, I was so pissed off at myself that I jumped several times waiting for the spacing to be open and then I rushed to the opening in the railing…

It was then that I woke up and indeed I was too tired to lift my legs off the bed and ended up rolling to the side to get up. I poured myself a glass of hot water and then proceeded to write this post.

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Olds: The Death of Phoebe Prince

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:31:07 -0400

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Phoebe_PrinceThis is something more along the lines of a Sankaku topic but I feel it’s somewhat notable to Hikikomories too in that it brings up the issue of bullying extending towards the internet:

Following her death, many crude comments about her were posted on her Facebook memorial page, most of which were removed. Her parents chose to have Phoebe interred in Ireland.

The rest of the case is somewhat textbook in the way neglect and bullying happens so I don’t have anything to add to it.I just thought it was… food for thought as far as where social withdrawal and internet culture is leading up to.

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